Sushi King

MM asked me yesterday whether wanna go for the Sushi King RM2 promotion. She has the card, and can invite up to 5 friends. So today, MM, Joni and me went to Sushi King at Queensbay Mall. I clocked out at 5pm and drove to QB.

MM wanted us to build a tower (of plates) but unfortunately the waiter asked to collect the plates halfway through. Anyway, we hentam the salmon and the unagi (and some others). 3 of us had total 19 plates. Nothing to boast about. Joni and MM commented that the sushi at Sushi King were not as nice as those at Zanmai or Sakae. I feel that the quality has dropped, or rather the Sushi King at Jusco Tmn U tasted better.

Enough of sushi for me for this year.....

Summary of the Saturday...and wishing Sunday will take a pause

• Came back to AS with Y on Friday, and managed to attend the MYF Easter party. Were in time for the makan and sketch. Didn't makan (except the jelly) because hubby made simple yet hearty dinner for us before we went to the party.
• On Saturday, woke up early for worship practice at  9.30am. Reached there, saw no one. Found out that it was 9.30pm after chinese service...was in a foul mood because wanted to wake up late that morning. grrrrrr.....
• Went back, sempat sweep, vacumn and mop 1 room - sweat, sweat, sweat!
• 12.30pm..went to the Chua's place to makan and see baby Julia. Got some neat and practical advises from Simone.
• Left at 2.30 pm, hubby and I went to get a metal shelf for the store room
• Reach home, hubby got to work and I went over to Aunty N's  house to collect mattress and aircon (thankful to them for thinking of us).
• Spent the remaining evening cleaning, moving thing, carrying things..
• By 7.30pm, after bathing for the 3rd time, we went out for dinner at WTG Pintu 10.
• Drop by Tesco to get curtain hooks
• Went to church for worship practice
• Back by 11.30pm and I was in bed by 12pm.

Super duper tired..................

Woke up early today to send other half to work...and went to LHDN to settle my income tax issue. And I thought I can go back to sleep by 9am...no!!! I have to wash clothes, wait for clothes, feed Brownie, update this blog, watch my overdue-for-1-week episode of Fringe, settle income tax letter, .....the list goes on....

I WANT TO SLEEEEEPPPPP!!!

Coughing

Been coughing for the last one month, on and off. Had taken 2 bottles of cough mixture but still coughing.
Sometimes cough until chest feels like exploding. Actually, it's very tiring each time I cough..takes up lot of energy. *cough* *cough*

Felt terrible yesterday, due to food poisoning and having flu and cough. I threw up my dinner and had diarrhoea.
Went to bed at 7.45pm after consuming all my drowsy medicine.

Am getting used to working life, but it's boring. The atmosphere in my office is quiet, kinda wish that people will interact more, and have a nosier environment. I have to silent my phone each day. sigh! There are just 8 of us in the team, 7 girls and 1 guy. I feel as though there is a barrier that is preventing me from getting closer to them. 4 of them always eat out, 1 eats with her hubby, 1 with lunch mate and the other with her gang. I am not saying that it is wrong to eat with their friends. I think I have yet to find my lunch buddy, but joining C and her friends from finance is quite fun! 

Mind my ramblings....Feeling emo now..wish I am back home, back to Dan and Brownie, where I feel belong.

Weekend

1st week of work gone just like that.
Am back for the weekend, and going back again to Pg tonight. Time passes awfully fast.
Was ambitious, thought of cooking for hubby yesterday but ended up so tired that we ate out. Shall attempt again the weeks to come.
Made some new friends last week, some of which are my own colleagues, while the others are from other department. Can't wait for tomorrow's orientation, hopefully to know more people.

P/s: Company too big, hard to get to know everyone cos people here tend to mind their own business. Sim and I agreed that the V-gang was unique.

1st day of work

Left for work around 7.15am today, arrived by 7.25am. We gathered at 8am at the lobby. Only after 11 of us (new hires) arrived, the HR lady escorted us to a room to brief us on setting up our account.
Got my photo taken for the badge (the lady was nice to let us view the photo and approve before scanning it to the badge).

My manager came to 'collect' me after that. I was shocked when we walked into the Materials Department. I envisioned about perhaps 20 or so people, but when the door opened...there were almost 100 person in the department, consisting of purchasers, procurement, and engineers, all related to ME. Anyway, boss took me to my desk, introduced me to my colleagues (which consist of all girls, except one guy). After that, I was given a pile of notes to read. And the reading began..and lasted until 5pm.

Let me talk about lunch. The people here go for lunch at 11.30am, because food finishes by 12pm. Imagine about 300 or more people in the cafeteria. The company boasts of an award winning cafeteria, in fact I heard the best in Penang. So many stall selling food namely chinese food, malay food, indian food, western food. They even have a fruit stall and a tid-bit stall.The company sponsors RM2/day for lunch for its staff. This means if I take 3 dishes, and it costs me RM2.90, the company pays RM2 and I pay RM 0.90. Cool or what???

And opposite this huge cafeteria is another cafe selling cakes and some other food, something like secret recipe. The food is more pricey, and is not subsidized.

In this company, there is a minimart. So anytime if you are hungry, you can go there to buy buns, mee in cup, etc.

Let's just say you can go and eat at the cafeteria or buy food anytime at all. Super flexi. Eat and eat and eat...
but getting from one place to another is a form of exercise..hehe

That's all for today. Hope tomorrow will be a better day.

Alone again..

Hubby went back a while ago. Seems like I need to get used (again!) to being alone here. Have officially moved to the apartment, found that my housemate MM is a nice girl. The place is nice, cozy and quiet. It has a park outside the apartment which many people, young and old seem to be jogging every evening.

Feeling quite worried now, that I need to drive around alone. Ever since the accident, I have this phobia that each time I come out of a junction, a car is going to bang me. The worst thing I discover is that Penang drivers have the tendency of coming out of the junction w/o looking whether there is an oncoming car. They expect you to stop for them. Also, many of them do not signal when they want to move to other lanes. Celaka betul...!!

I miss Brownie too...can you believe it, that we can get emotionally attached to dogs? Maybe not you, but I do.

Cant wait to see hubby again on Monday night...he got a course here:)

Kang Beef House

Since hubby and I were already in Penang, we decided (or rather I decided) to try out the famous Kang Beef house at Jelutong. The name said it all, everything sold here is beef-based. You can opt for fried rice, hor-fun, herbal soup, beef meatballs, steamboat. It is a must try for all beef lovers out there.
We took quite a while to find the place due to wrong coordinates keyed into my Garmin. Finally we found the place, but had to walk quite a distance because we werent't sure where to park our cars.

Front view (the back view is facing the main road)

Menu

Chefs busy at work

When we arrived it was almost 9pm (the shop closes at 10pm). Quickly I ordered the beef fried rice with a bowl of meat ball soup (RM 12.80) while hubby ordered dry hor fun with beef (RM 9.80).

Beef fried rice (I give it 6/10. I still think the beef fried rice at Viet Cafe Alor Star tasted better)

The meat-ball soup that came with it

I didnt manage to snap pictures of hubby's food as I was already too hungry gobbling down my own food. Anyway, he was disappointed with it. (Rating 7/10) For people who prefers their food on the saltier side, the hor-fun is tasteless!! We also ordered the fried meat-ball. I think, if I rolled up a ball of Ramli's minced beef and fry, it will taste better. So my rating is 4/10.

I think we made a mistake of ordering the above, as we should be ordering their signature dishes like beef noodle, steamboat...those soupy stuff. Might go there and try again, someday.

You can find more pictures and reviews here and here.

Kang Beef House
474 Jalan Jelutong, 11600 Penang, West Malaysia.
12.00pm-2.30pm, 4.30pm-10.00pm (Closed Tuesday)
GPS: 5.391811, 100.313605

Mui Choy with pork belly and Stir-fry radish with minced pork

I know i know...today's menu seems so porkish. Well, I am trying to finish whatever that is left in the fridge, since tomorow we will not be eating in, and the day after I will be moving to Penang.

Hubby loves mui choy, thus I am cooking this for him as a token of love (cos it's not really my favourite..hehe). You can get the recipe for mui choy here.

Mui Choy with pork belly

The next dish; stir-fry radish with pork is taken from here. I added other ingredients such as dried chillies and cashew nut (ala Kung-pow). If you like your radishes to be soft, do cover with a wok-cover, the steam will cause the radish to be soft.

Radish with minced pork

Look what I saw curling-up under the stove...

Brownie boo getting lazier and lazier

Till next time..

xoxo,
Em

Labu air soup with bak kut, stir-fry long beans with egg and minced beef medly

Since I had some left over labu-air (I found out that it is called calabash), hubby suggested to make soup with it. In his scout days, in one occasion, they were given 1 labu air and some chicken and bamboo. So they dump everything into the bamboo, cooked the entire thing over fire, and the result turned out good. Previously I had cooked them with minced pork and tang-hoon. Well, I found the recipe online for this soup. You can find it here.
Here's the soup:

Calabash (labu air) bak kut soup

Stir-fry long beans do not require any introduction. There are so many version of this dish. You can cook long beans with belacan, with prawns, with lap cheong, or with chai por. Today, I kept it simple by frying them with egg, hubby's favourite. Always remember to fry the long beans first, add a pinch of salt and lastly the egg. Some people tend to add the long beans into the egg mixture, it is not wrong, but in my opinion, the long bean will taste quite raw, which I dislike.

Stir fry long beans with egg

The next dish, is what I call the minced beef medly. It's quite simple actually, the ingredients are the same as those you use to make spaghetti or any minced beef pie. U will need minced beef (Ramli's is good enough), onions, button mushroom, diced carrots, chinese wine..which are the main ingredients. For the sauce you can use tomato sauce/oyster sauce/hoisin sauce/oriental barbeque sauce. I used the latter with some oyster sauce. Add in some freshly ground black pepper too for an ommph! I've seen some versions whereby those frozen veggies (baby corn, green peas) are added too. In fact, some people add chicken stock into the gravy. It's up to you actually, go with your creative juices.

Minced beef medly

That's all for today (lunch and dinner). Spend the whole morning cutting, slicing and cooking. Time to rest and wait for hubby to come home. Hope he will enjoy the food.

xoxo,
Em

Testimony: To give God the glory....

I shared a testimony in church today. This is the full version. Hope you will be blessed as you wait upon Him and trust in His faithfulness.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I stand before you today to testify of God’s faithfulness and goodness in my life. Many of you know that I’ve been looking for a job for the last 4-5 months. My prayer to God was for a job which is near home, a job which I can come back to my house each day. After two unsuccessful months of job search in Alor Star, Gurun, Jitra and SP, I prayed and decided to apply for jobs at Kulim.  Now, I was not keen, as Kulim is about an hour and a half drive to AS. Nevertheless, I prayed and ask the Lord to guide me in my job selection. I attended an interview in Kulim at the end of January. They told me in 2 weeks I will receive the reply. I prayed and prayed. 2 weeks came and pass, no news, I was already restless, so I decided to extend my job selection to Penang. 

It was no coincidence when I submit my application for the post of a materials engineer with the company in Penang. You see, all this while the job openings at this company, related to my field of knowledge had been contractual based. On that day when I saw the opening for materials engineer which is for permanent staff, I actually debated with myself whether to apply or not, since I wanted to work as an Industrial Engineer. To cut the long story short, I applied just for fun. I received a phone call the following day to attend the interview in Penang. The interview went so well that I was confident that I had very high chance of getting the job. The manager told me that they will get back to me in 2 weeks. On the way back after the interview, I received a call in which I was offered the job at Kulim. I thank the Lord and happily accepted the offer. This was end of February.

Although I have already gotten the job at Kulim, I still felt the need to pray for the job in Penang. 2 weeks came, and I got a call from the manager that I am shortlisted for the job. He asked me to wait for a few more days for his manager to come back from a business trip for the hiring approval. I thought that the 2^nd day of SU camp, I would have gotten the answer. But no, I got the answer only the end of the week that the hire had been approved by the higher level manager. Now the current manager said I need to wait for the approval from the US. He said he will come back to me the following week (2^nd last week of March). I told God, please if this job is not for me, please spare me the agony of waiting and I will glad fully work in Kulim.

I thank the Lord that He gave me the patience to wait, and not to grumble. It was the day before my convocation, when I receive the call that said US has approved the hiring. I was to wait for the HR to contact me. Now, the question left is how much will they pay me; higher or lower than the one in Kulim? If higher of course I will accept without a thinking twice, but if lower? Again, I prayed to God that the salary will be what He intends for me. And Praise the Lord, the salary is beyond what I asked for. Then I knew, God has opened up this door for me. I thank the Lord with my entire being for the job in Penang with Agilent Technologies.

I also thank the Lord for blessing me with the best post-graduate student award (for my course), and for a successful convocation. I also thank the Lord that the fall that I had (my carelessness of course!) happened after the convocation and not before, else I would be limping up the stage in pain.

I take this opportunity to thank the members of this church, especially those who were in the same discipleship class as me, for carrying the burden, and praying alongside with me throughout the last months. I am grateful to the Lord for amazing parents, sister and a wonderful husband for their prayers and support. Lastly, I encourage all of you to never stop trusting the Lord. There are times, when He does not answer us immediately, but we are to continue to trust Him that He knows the best plans for us, as is written in Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future....”

My Lord knows best. To Him be the glory!

Penang Day Trip

Hubby and I went to Penang today to hand-in my documents to the new company I will be working in, and also to view the potential rooms that I would be renting.

The first place we looked at was a room at N-Park condo. The place is quite posh, with gym, swimming pool, sauna, etc. But the bad thing is that the area has only 1 parking, which means that if I rent the room there, I will have to park outside, which is most likely to be summoned because of the yellow line. And although the girls which are renting the particular lot are Christians, I saw that there was a Buddhist/Taoist charm pasted at the front door. Hmm....totally out!

The other room potential room was at a double storey house in Batu Uban. The fella didn't pick up my calls, and after the 3rd time, I said "Forget it".

Now, the 3rd room is the main reason why we came to Penang. We couldn't view this room until 7pm as the lady was working. The room is at Melati Aparment at Taman Sri Nibong. When I saw the place, I immediately liked it. There was just 4 storey (including ground floor), and the place is just cosy. It may not have gym, swimming pool, minimart or hair saloon, but it looks comfy. Although parking inside the apartment area is limited to only 1 person, you can park outside along the road, opposite the park which has no yellow line. And this lady's apartment is fully furnished, and the best thing is she is a Christian, who attends PCC, and there's cg in her house every Tuesday.

So, I will be moving in next week, after paying her the deposit, and getting the keys.

Moving again.....